Vang Pao

Vang Pao (8 December 1929-6 January 2011) was a Major-General in the Royal Lao Army during the Laotian Civil War and Vietnam War.

Biography
Vang Pao was born in Nonghet, Laos in 1929 to a Hmong family, and he served in the French Army during World War II before serving in the Hmong resistance against the Japanese. During the First Indochina War, he became the only Hmong general in the Royal Lao Army, and he commanded the US-backed Secret Army against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnam. In 1975, he and his wife emigrated to the United States upon the communist victory in the Laotian Civil War, and they initially settled in Montana before moving to California. In 1981, he founded an anti-communist group of Laotian and Hmong exiles, and, on 4 June 2007, he was arrested by the US government for plotting a coup against the Laotian communist regime, a violation of the Neutrality Acts. He was released on 12 July, and the charges were dropped on 18 September 2009. He died in 2011 at the age of 89, having become the face of the Hmong-American community and fathered 25 children with different wives.